2 good questions. I do not trade for a living however I am very successful. I live off of my job and grow retirement wealth in my 401 and IRA.

I swing trade leveraged ETFâs and have found them to have enough leverage to have large enough moves to earn a reasonable return. My experience in different instruments is limited to stocks, options and ETFâs. I evolved away from options and believe they are not for me. Individual corporate stocks may be a good way to create wealth however I find it difficult to have consistency with them.

I found a good back testing program and quickly became fascinated with the idea of trading index tracking ETFâs. Picking the market direction mechanically. It took me years of patience and research in signal development to become consistent.

If you are new and looking for a quick fix you are in the wrong industry. Trading with profit takes years of full time research and development. I put more time into trading than I did my full time job for around 4 years before I found the correct mix for me. After that trading has been nothing but joy and success.

I am not interested necessarily in a debate about specific strategies. My question is the following:

From anyone on this board who has successfully traded for a living:

1. How did you find your particular trading niche from the hundreds of instruments and ways to trade each instrument?

2. Would you have any advice about choosing and finding a strategt?

Thanks

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Cough up the money to a data provider that will give you access to many different markets you're interested in. Next, back test (code or manual) your trade strategy on all of those markets you have access to. Simply, most of your expenses in the beginning will be thrown towards your data providers considering you won't actually be trading while you try to find a strategy(s) and suitable market(s) to exploit via that strategy(s).

Therefore, study and study and study the charts or quotes until you start seeing something in the price action that you like. Next, try designing your own trade strategy...be prepare to do this for many months or years at the minimum.

You'll discover one market with a few different strategies for different types of price actions in that one market or you'll settle with a few different markets with one strategy...whichever floats your boat but the latter implies you'll be on the sidelines more often than the former.